Why Chef Anita Lo is Crazy About Cagen’s O-Toro Hand Roll

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New York's Annisa owner and chef Anita Lo explains how a few well-chosen ingredients for simple handrolls can be transcendental in the right hands.

Courtesy Cagen

O-Toro handroll from Cagen

Each week, we ask one superstar chef to tell us the best thing they’ve tasted recently, out and about in their home cities.

There’s a lot of talk about women in the professional kitchen these days: scandals erupt in the wake of misogynist magazine spreads; major newspapers and entire books devote pages to the subject. Irrespective of her gender, Anita Lo is one of our favorite chefs. At her New York City restaurant Annisa, Lo showcases her mastery of melting-pot cuisine, deploying ingredients like miso, yuzu and shiso as confidently as she does harissa or foie gras. But on a recent night out, Lo went straightforward with a simple Japanese sushi roll. Here she tells us how a few well-chosen ingredients can be transcendental in the right hands.

Why it's so good: On a recent visit to Cagen in the East Village, I watched chef Toshio Tomita hand chop tuna to order in rhythmic, mesmerizing strokes until some of the glistening fat rendered and pooled on his cutting board. He seasoned it minimally and placed the fish inside a sheet of nori with a bit of rice that was just warm enough to keep the tuna at that barely-melting stage. The nori itself is made from half green and half black seaweed; it seemed to have more depth and umami flavor than your standard issue wrap. Tomita handed the roll across the counter as soon as he finished making it, so that the nori still had an audible crunch when I bit into it. I think I swooned at that first bite.